


i dare you to turn off your flashlight

by madsaialik



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Alternate Universe - Road Trip, F/M, First Time, Mutual Pining, Professor Ben Solo, and there was only one bed, haha just kidding, in a haunted hotel, inspired by the art works of Jenna Barton @dappermouth, light description of past violence/murders, loose buzzfeed unsolved au, mechanic/bartender/wild life rehabilitation/bad influence Rey (Solo), overwhelming use of terms of endearment, soft gothic, they're in love ur honor, think modern summers growing up together but make it spooky, unless????, what if I accidentally booked us a honeymoon suit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:14:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24371860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madsaialik/pseuds/madsaialik
Summary: Her used VHS tapes are stacked along two bookshelves, intermixed with car manuals and worn paperbacks. Slanting chicken scratch is scrawled over a neater, white sticker. Dates go back nine years, Rey’s handwriting only marginally improved.Ben and I in the woods behind his house. Ben and I at the Church of Transfiguration. Ben and I visiting the hanging tree. Ben and I in the Hammer Murders Manor. Ben and I— Ben and I—  Ben and I—He paws at his chest to dismiss the phantom ache that pools there. A bulky old tv is sitting on an even more ancient VHS player withBen and I at the Blue Hills Copper Minesticking out of it. His fingertips find the thin scar on his cheek that runs down the column of his throat. Damn ghosts and weak support beams and the instinct to cover Rey's smaller body with his own.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo
Comments: 79
Kudos: 196
Collections: RHG: Medusa Issue #02, Reylo Hidden Gems





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spectreleaders (SilverSie)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverSie/gifts).



> hi! this work is complete/pure indulgence to be posted semi-weekly while I write a rear window au to combat the writing burnout I'm having with my novel 😪😪😪
> 
> I'm gifting this to my LOVELY ANGEL of a beta, Jess, because my ongoing hatred toward ADF has prevented me from working on [The Inverse Must Also Be True](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21989020/chapters/52471087)
> 
>  **caption warnings per chapter breakdown, with some spoilers:**
> 
> chapter one-- rey and ben visit a home where murder by hammer took place, the event is not described beyond the first mention/description of a false shadow person/unnatural topping on pizza (pineapple) 🤧

Summer arrived weeks ago with vivacity. Rey runs a towel over her face, scrubbing at the grease smeared on her forehead. Moths flutter near the security light on the outside of her garage, some swarm the fluorescent strips overhead. Motor oil and humidity choke the air. A trickle of ice water dribbles down her chin as she sits on the cement slab. The coyotes are singing tonight, their ghostly howls reverberating through the thick trees. Deer move through the underbrush, scattering leaves and uprooting grass. The low buzz of insects and rustle of wings shift the air. It's so very alive, the rich earthiness that presses on her. Then there was the vastness above. The harsh outline of treetops against the deep bluish blanket of stars.

Rey loves summer, everything so opposite of the empty months that weigh on her heart. Winter is a lean, white hound, who walks by night and makes no sound.

The arrival of summer brings another. Her sleepy town comes alive with families seeking refuge from larger cities, filling the beautiful houses on the outskirts. The rest of the year their empty windows like eyes keep watch on the small town.

On the tallest hill, a light turns on. A bright square of light that pulls at the corner of her mouth. She knew he was coming, heard from him earlier in the day. Being told that he was going to return isn't as comforting as knowing he's with her.

All of this started when Ben Solo was roped into looking out for her, the foster daughter of his landlady. All gangly limbs and petulance, the two of them. Rey with her habit of slipping between bushes and sleeping in logs often found herself at odds with Ben. Ben, who pushed his glasses up and explained the thick texts he was reading _inside_ for _school_ during _summer._

_You've seen the dog outside of town, lying where the witches are buried._

_Wanna check it out?_

Now at nineteen, she scoots a little further out so she can lean back on her elbows. Home is somewhere above her in the empty space between stars and past the strange gas station on the interstate. Summer feels like home, but it might be the company she keeps.

She sips at her sweating beer that's not for her, not enjoying the taste but the tangy coolness. Ben insisted on her taking a sip when he had turned twenty-one, even when she was grossly underage. Hops harbors nostalgia rather than refreshment. The freeway is too far away to hear, but she can feel it's hum with each point that touches the earth. The street light bathes the slumbering street with a yellow in a mockery of sunshine. Hills roll in various hues of artificial light. The man-made clashing with nature that only just tolerates the people living here. The myths that are tucked away is how Rey got Ben to leave the house, chasing ghosts into abandoned cabins. Big talk of how _of course I'm not scared_ met with _I dare you to turn your flashlight off._

Her cut-off shorts scraps against the rough pavement as she stretches out. Heavy footsteps echo down the road. Deer scatter deeper into the woods when the wind shifts. They recognize her, but strangers make them wary. The ravens roosting give her a maternal quork of warning as he nears. Trinkets they've brought her clutter her windowsill in exchange for slices of apple. Scavengers recognize one another after all.

"Isn't late professor Solo?" She says with her eyes still shut, her fingers pick at the label of her beer.

"It's doctor now," he says quietly in a voice darker and deeper than the shadows. She can hear the smile in his voice, but seeing it when she opens her eyes makes her chest constrict. The scar from when that old mine collapsed still lines his cheek, lighter now that it's ever been. Eroded by time and taut with the soft curve of his mouth.

"Your mom told me." She smirks up at him.

"Surprised she had the time." He folds his long body next to her, leaning his elbows on his knees. A swig of her beer is gone, past lips not her own.

"She's been busy, saving democracy and everything." When he chooses not to argue, Rey pulls herself up. Senator Organa still smarts, but he relaxes a little with a huff after she bumps against him. 

"Hey, Ben."

"Rey," he says with a smile and steals the rest of her beer. "How have you been?"

"Good." _It's been lonely._ "I'm glad you're here." _I've missed you. More than before._

"Are you busy tomorrow?" He leans in like he has a secret. The cool, recycled smell of the city on his skin. It's a memory of scent, like burning fields in the wind at the height of autumn.

"We've got the summer to ourselves, right? What do you got?" Her smile widens, excitement fluttering in her stomach.

"Another murder house," Ben says with all that morbid eagerness that drives them into anything slightly supernatural. Sadly, no ghosts have appeared to them. Yet. Rey is hopeful, and she knows Ben indulges her.

"I know violent death is necessary and all for haunting, but please tell me no axes were involved this time."

He pauses for a moment, his lips tight as if he were trying to keep back a laugh. "A hammer."

Ben does laugh then when she groans and leans back onto her elbows again.

"Wanna check it out?"

***

Rey isn't afraid of ghosts, more intrigued. It's an overwhelming sensation to chase answers down long halls and past creaking doors. Ben at her back is comforting, but when the air is choked with an unnamed fervor that tricks her limbic system in between fear and titillation. The same sensation comes over her every time she so much as glances at Ben. A new awareness she doesn't recognize. Either, he's oblivious or studiously ignores it. Rey chews on her cheek, they spent each summer together even with the years between them. There are bigger things to dwell on, she thinks.

"Cool. This looks like a nightmare," Rey mutters. The manor is three stories in various stages of dilapidation. The windows are only boarded up on the first story, parasitic vines claw up the wrap around porch. The second and third story is littered with glass-less voids that Rey flicks over, not lingering on one for too long. Ben is looking up at the building lazily, expression schooled into a scholarly interest. He brushes his long hair back into a sloppy knot, most of it escaping down the nape of his neck.

"Camera on?" he asks, fiddling with his flashlight. The cameras were an upgrade from last summer. Red night vision in preparation for Ben's repeated terrible idea of let's turn the light off. Rey has her old VHS recorder, bulky and a pain in the ass. It's for authenticity, Benjamin she says every time he sighs in its general direction. As if he didn't enjoy the Blair Witch Project as much as her.

"Are you excited?" 

He points his smaller, higher resolution lenses at her. A giggle bubbles up behind her hand, clasped between her lips and a wide smile. She nods eagerly, already trembling with anticipation. The tendons of her legs feel like their bouncing even though each muscle locks.

"I have the usual knot that I have going into places like this," Rey says into the camera. Her stomach aches a little and the skin of her back tingles, but she wants to cross the threshold more than anything. Hazel eyes are too bright in the light of Ben's camera still trained on her.

"You wanna hear the story yet?"

She shakes her head "Nah, it's been a while since you tucked me in with a tale of a gruesome murder." Spending the night in each location is incredibly stupid, an ongoing dare between them that they can't grow out of.

Ben ruffles her hair until she swats him away. He asks her to wait even though she's about the scale the building to get in. With his camera adjusted, he opens the door with a yank.

"Hm, I hate this," Rey says as she steps into the building. Humidity and gelidity war, pulling at the hair on the back of her neck. With no other light other than the half-full moon, they couldn't see outside what their flashlight beams are focused on. It was the typical abandoned residence, littered with debris and splashed with a lot of graffiti phallic members.

"You ever think ghost watch people spray paint penises on their home?" Ben asks and tilts his head at her with a boyish smile. "Not that ghosts are real."

"You think their tolerance for bullshit is higher or lower for it?" Rey shoots back, scuffing her boot over the faded, over-detailed piece of high art.

"Should we find out?"

"Ben, no—" Rey says just as his cultured intelligence flies out the damn door each time. The echoes of their childhood in each raised eyebrow pointed at her. There had been a time where she had been a scared girl jumping into his side, so he turned it into a game. This steadfast obnoxious that dampened her anxiety. She knew what was coming next, but not knowing whether to laugh or punch him.

"Hey ghosts, go fuck yourselves," shouts Ben Solo, Ph.D. Rey slaps her hand over her face in exasperation. She mutters a silent prayer that the deafening silence that follows doesn't retort.

"Must you jump straight to antagonizing them? You could at least build up to it," she growls and kicks him in the shin before he can jump away.

"Where's the fun in that?" he laughs, the camera shaking in her direction. "Oh, should I mention someone was killed where you're standing?"

Rey jolts and takes ten steps further into the grand foyer. 

"You're the worst."

"You love me."

"Shut up, Ben." 

She huffs and points her camera around the room, taking in the still beautiful exposed timber on the ceiling and wide staircase. Their boots stir dust that brushes lightly against the hair of their arms. Large rooms and high ceilings were built to echo sounds of parties back to guests, the scent of champagne-like half-remembered dreams. Or just a piece of her overactive imagination which moves shadows in the corner of her eye.

Summer is the best and worst time for their antics. Insects watch their progress, speaking in clicks and murmurs of translucent wings. Owls and bats flash past the gaps in the windows. The sudden absence of heat that unnerves her, something Ben never seems to experience, much to her chagrin.

Together they enter a kitchen area.

"Hey, don't touch that counter," Ben warns her with a jerk of his chin.

"Why, was someone murdered here?" Rey shoots back scathingly.

"No, it looks sticky." Her face brightens at that, "please don't say—"

"Ectoplasm!"

"That doesn't count as evidence—Rey, why are you smelling it?"

"Don't think I forget how you told me that you try to determine if it's human remains by licking it." 

The freckles on her nose wrinkle with her scrunched nose at him and the smell, strangely garlic.

"That was one time," he groans.

When she can't determine whether the sticky stain is (isn't, Ben thinks) ectoplasm, they move on.

"Ready for the first dare of the night?" Ben goads as they climb the staircase.

"This place isn't that creepy, let's hear it." Rey concedes as they reach the landing, two halls stretch into the darkness beyond the limits of their flashlights. Twin rows of shut doors. "I immediately regret my words."

"You go to the third floor, and I check this out." Ben pushes her with a foot on her hip to the next set of stairs. She groans but begrudgingly goes on her own to the last floor.

"If I run into bats again, I'm going to claw your eyes out," she yells down.

She hears his chuckle in the walls and in the sole of her boots. 

"Whatever you say, sweetheart."

Rey grins in the darkness before the chill demands her attention. Ben's steps below her are somehow everywhere, before her and behind at the same time.

"Hey ghosts," Ben shouts, "turn on this flashlight if you want to talk, or better, turn on the light if you don't want to talk."

Rey pauses, wanting to turn around more than anything.

"No shit. Rey! The light turned on, guess I have to shut up now," he laughs in disbelief.

She shakes her head and edges down the hall a bit more. She and her camera poke into a few rooms, torn carpet, and oppressing stagnant air greet her each time. Wind whistles through the open windows, leaves scrape against the floor. Her breath is a little ragged, but she presses on, knowing Ben is doing the same, much more fearless than she downstairs. She grew up stumbling through places like these, respecting the leftover presences, where Ben mocks and makes her laugh when she gets herself too scared. It's been like this for years. Him both calculated and reckless as they wander into places where people have died. Rey walking lightly, a bird poised for flight. Where Ben ignores every oddity they stumble across, Rey absorbs it and turns it over in her mind until it's much larger than what it was.

She reaches the end of the hall and turns and-

_Screams._

"Rey!" 

Ben’s steps thunder toward the staircase to reach her.

"I'm okay! Some asshat spray painted a shadow person onto the wall back here." Her voice is high and breathless, the spike of terror left her shaken but not completely perturbed. It's a good prank, she gives the vandal some credit. Ben's light flashes down the hall as he skips two steps at a time. "I said I'm okay."

"Just checking." He chafes a hand over her bare bicep, calluses rough and warm against her skin. A door slams to their right so violently that even Ben jumps, between Rey and the noise, of course.

"Maybe we should sleep on another floor?" Rey suggests lightly, her hand clutching the shirt at his waist. She peeks around one broad shoulder at the closed door. "Wait, I dare you to go in there."

He gives her a look and takes her challenge, "You're going to stay out here by yourself?"

Her flashlight chooses that moment to flicker. "Fuck no, come on."

Rey is the one to twist the door open. It sticks to the aged threshold, popping open. A library lays on the other side with two wide windows that fill Rey with misplaced jealousy. If it were day time, the natural light they would bring would be perfect. For a moment, she forgets where she is. Her phone wiggles out of her pocket as it often does. It falls to the floor with a clunk, she can feel Ben roll her eyes at it. Much like her VHS recorder, he fervently hates her phone and the pile of electrical tape that holds it together.

She slips it back in her pocket and runs her light over the remaining bookcases. They take up three walls, some torn down or cracked. Books and ripped pages scatter the floor. The torn curtains pile under the windows, the threadbare carpet faded by the harsh glare of the sun. There is a path worn as if someone paces day in and day out.

A book conveniently falls to the floor at Ben's feet. He scowls at the squeak that comes from her. Calmly, he bends and picks it up. After flipping through a few pages he goes, "You have a shit taste in books."

"Ben!"

He turns to her with mischief in the curve of his cheek. "Lights off?"

Rey sighs deeply as she flicks the power button. In the dark she moves toward him, her nose bumping into his arm. He jumps and threads his fingers with her searching hand, "ok, that startled me."  
The silence stretches with a held breath and ragged heartbeats. The darkness seems to reach out and blur the boundary between their skin and air. He squeezes her hand and chuckles under his breath as she flinches against him. An owl hooted outside, a more distant reply echoing it before Rey finally turns her flashlight back on.

She fumbles with her camera, pointing it at Ben's bemused face.

"Believe in ghosts yet?"

"No."

***

Maz's bar is where Rey _doesn't_ work. Not dissimilar to how she _doesn't_ clean up transmissions and change spark plugs in her garage without the proper licenses. She's also _not_ a wildlife rehabilitator, but that doesn't stop her neighbors from bringing her baby squirrels in the spring.

The sky is overbearing today, the thick whispering veil disrupted by the churning creation of a thunderhead. The ravens quorked at her as she locked up her garage earlier in the day. It was a greeting today despite the ominous skies, better than when they warn her of what her day might bring. One offered her a pine bough, the smell of smoke, and resin in exchange for strawberries.  
The gravel on the side of the road is wet before the rain came. Later, droplets will glisten between strands of dark hair as Ben dips under the threshold. Nobody looks up as he enters but the regulars often look the other way. Habits of not glancing out the window out at night, not wanting to see what is crossing the yard again.

The door says _no outside food_ but the hot box is still placed in front of her.

"Pineapple and pepperoni, only for you, pizza goblin."

"Not all of us were raised with the same refined palate as our revered Supreme Leader." She rotates her wrist as she bows with a flourish at her waist.

"I told you my student evaluation comments in confidence," he grumbles.

"This better be an apology pizza." She shoots him a look as she pulls it towards her.

"I wouldn't be eating pineapple otherwise." Ben points out as he guides the wayward piece that wanted to fold. "It wasn't my fault that you got scared."

"You admitted hearing the footsteps too!" she accused, gesticulating with her pizza far too close to his nose. " _Then_ , you pretended to be asleep. _Then_ , you started kicking my sleeping bag."

"Well, I didn't expect you to jump me and drag us out the door." He snaps his teeth at her piece. Rey jerks back indignantly and nibbles her slice of pepperoni and sacrilegious pineapple, scowling at him the entire time.

"I'm not apologizing again for getting your socks wet. Who sleeps with socks on?"

There's another grumble behind her, too low for her to hear and not irritated enough for her to make him speak up.

Rey goes back to organizing the bar, straightening liquor bottles, and wiping down glasses. She comes and goes from the pizza box. Between her and Ben they polish off the large pie over the evening fractured by lightning and small talk. The sink keeps better time than the clock, a drop hits the basin precisely every three seconds.

His dark gaze flickers between her movements behind the bar and looking out into the darkening woods.

"Why are you here, Ben?" _Why do you keep returning?_

He knows what she’s leaving unsaid, _you hated it here in the summers._

_But, I didn’t hate it with you._

"For you," he says softly with an even softer look in his eye that Rey can't comprehend. "I have a proposal."

"You'll have to duel all of my other illustrious suitors." She waves to old Kenobi hunched over his sudoku puzzle in his booth and the rest of the half-empty bar. Ben makes a show of seizing up his opponents, sitting up taller in his stool.

"I like my odds." The side of his mouth quirks up. He picks up the pizza box to reveal a manila folder underneath, handing it to her without much ceremony. It's heavier than Rey expects, making her brows raise as she opens it.

"How long did it take you to plan this? Don't you have a job for the rest of the year? And students?" Rey smirks at him but he shrugs it off with a nonchalance that doesn't hide how nervous he is.

"My office hours stay pretty open when they're all scared of me."

His life hours away must be lonely, the thought comes uninvited. Rey doesn't trust her car to make the trip, and Ben's schedule is too busy to travel this far from the university on a regular basis. She frowns down at the file, thinking of her car again. His plan is an elaborate winding way south into the heart of Louisiana, ending in New Orleans and it's finest haunts.

The trip spans over the summer, littered with abandoned hospitals and ghost invested hotels.

"I'm in."

"Yeah?" He still has that boyish charm that isn't diminished by age or scars. It makes her think of grabbing his hand to keep up with his long legs and longer stride rushing home in twilight woods. Ben's ardent smile is still the brightest thing in her life.

"I have a habit of following you into questionable places."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's weird having a camera at the end of the bed like we're filming a sex tape," she says just as he presses the recording button, catching the entire sentence on tape.
> 
> Ben, who's hair is curled to an impossible degree in the humidity, pops up to stand at his full height. There's color in both of their cheeks again for different reasons. "It's not like-"
> 
> "Right, right. I mean-" Rey tries to complete his sentence for him but whatever she had meant to say died on her tongue.
> 
> "Yeah," Ben finishes with garbled inelegance and stares at his sanctioned side of the bed as if it just asked him to unravel the secrets of the galaxy. Or maybe he's realizing that they've never slept together in this type of adjacency. They both jump when Rey's stomach growls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **chapter two cw**
> 
> a visit to a haunted hotel with the mild description of the following: death by police brutality/fire, death of a sex worker (by strangulation), EVP conversations, real bad vibes coming from the basement

The sky is clear, but the wind makes the deer nervous. Unblemished blue is wide and on the edge of something too complex for the human eye. The galaxy and all of its mysteries felt touchable on days like this, or at least reachable. Rey has a habit of losing track of time under this sort of translucent azure.

Ben arrives early, a raven yells at him for it.

"That one's Teedo, he bites." The corvid bobs its glossy head, eyeing Ben's hand to see if he has any food to offer. Rey looks up from the engine she's slowly reconstructing and points at a half-eaten sandwich, "give him a slice of turkey."

Ben frowns at the plate, glancing at her with a studious glint in his eye. It’s not often that she doesn’t finish something in seconds or that her hands tremble. She’s nervous to leave and won’t admit, he won’t push it. 

"You don't share food with me," he says sullenly to her, and then to the raven, he goes, "you're very disturbing."

Rey laughs so loud that it muffles the clank of her tools falling to the floor. Teedo ruffles his feathers, clipping his beak against Ben's extended finger. His ears are red under his hair, Rey knows because he cards a hand through it to make sure they're covered.

"A bird is disturbing but not, oh I don't know--" She bites her lip in thought, memories shared between them flicker, "Oh! Remember all those dolls?"

"They were just dolls," Ben rolls his eyes just like he did when they stumbled across _all those dolls._ "Are you packed?"

"Yeah, yeah. I need to take a shower first." Rey flashes her grease-covered hands before delving back into the piston chamber. Ben wanders around her two-car garage, skirting around the half-built 1967 Mustang Mach One. She is a solitary creature by habit, never recognizing the weight of her isolation until Ben falls back into her orbit. Others in her space irritate her, but familiarity is braided too thick between them. He knows better than to touch anything. As intelligent as he is, the man can't tell the difference or use of a hex key and adjustable spanner wrench to his father’s chagrin. Flickers of repressed memories of Han bent over an engine make him turn from the toolbox. A certain nosiness forces him to take it all in and store the smell that clings to her skin, how the light slants through the window. How the freckles on Rey's bare shoulder are darker in the combination of natural and artificial light of her work station.

He leans on his hip a few feet from her. She looks smaller with the hunk of metal and curled spine. 

"I'm almost done," she assures him, though it's unnecessary when there's no impatience lining his face.

"Do you want help?" Ben offers before scoffing at her unimpressed look, "I know some things."

"Thank you, but-" Her face pinches with exertion for a moment, the line of her wiry tricep becomes suddenly defined. "I'm almost there."

Like the false barrier of the sky, the veil between them has grown thin. Going from unthought-of to a dominating stream of consuming every detail of each other. For Rey, it started when she was fourteen and following the suddenly broad outline of her closest friend in the dark and not being afraid. For Ben, it was two summers ago and showing up at Rey's new garage, greeted with a beaming smile, and _oh_ followed by _no, that's inappropriate._ He still brushes those wayward thoughts aside because _I used to babysit her_ and _that's not something she would ever consider, I have to respect that._ They're just friends, _pals_ even. Just people who know each other inside and out and have for years. Binary stars that hardly notice anything outside their circling dance. Friends, Ben tells himself again.

Her used VHS tapes are stacked along two bookshelves, intermixed with car manuals and worn paperbacks. Slanting chicken scratch is scrawled over a neater, white sticker. Dates go back nine years, Rey’s handwriting only marginally improved. _Ben and I in the woods behind his house. Ben and I at the Church of Transfiguration. Ben and I visiting the hanging tree. Ben and I in the Hammer Murders Manor. Ben and I— Ben and I— Ben and I—_

He paws at his chest to dismiss the phantom ache that pools there. A bulky old tv is sitting on an even more ancient VHS player with _Ben and I at the Blue Hills Copper Mine_ sticking out of it. His fingertips find the thin scar on his cheek that runs down the column of his throat. Damn ghosts and weak support beams and the instinct to cover Rey's smaller body with his own. Her second camera is still sitting in the harness that holds it to her chest in a heap. Ben gathers it up in one hand.

"I'm going upstairs, sweetheart," he tells her, something like wistfulness lodged in his throat, there's a distracted grunt in reply. 

Her shoulder blades shift between the thin lines of her tank top straps. Ben's attention snaps forward, his toe bumping the bottom step that leads to Rey's loft. To call it an apartment would be a misuse of the word. Rey lives in a botanical garden. Plants keep the air fresh and the smell of motor oil downstairs. Her bedroom is also her living room and dining room and kitchen. The full-sized bed that he knows his feet would hang off of has a ragged afghan blanket tangled with the light blue flat sheet. A small settee has her clean laundry sitting on it, half folded, next to her packed luggage. It's new, the only new thing in the room. He opens it up, pauses at the lacy underthings, blushes furiously, tucks the camera between a sweater and a pair of jeans, and zips it back up numbly. He's seen her in swimsuits at twelve and sixteen and left him unbothered, hardly noticed over the cover of his book while she swam in his family’s pool. Vaguely, he remembers how weird it was for her to have breasts all of a sudden.

He refills the humidifier next to her more fragile orchids sitting just out of the sunlight. Ben goes around touching the dirt within each pot, looking for moisture or dryness the way Rey had taught him. Mopping up water from her pitcher with his foot and paper towels after him. All of this is much more enjoyable than domestic activities for himself. Ben has always loved Rey more than he did himself. A simple sentiment weighed down by too many memories to try to unfold or deny. She is the only person that made him feel quiet and steady, that looked up to him, that didn't expect him to continue his family's legacy. When he was seventeen, on the cusp of adulthood and real responsibility, when he selfishly thought would be his last summer. Rey, eleven and chipped tooth, had tackled him around the middle, wrapped him in dirty elbows, and pressed her messy hair against his chest.

_I didn't think you would come back,_ she had whispered, all vulnerable honesty. She wasn't cynical against him as a person, but the world as a whole. Never him, who she looked at him with stars in her eyes, heart, and emotion all over her face instead of her sleeve.

Why would you think that? He asked before he thought better of it. There was a beat of silence, punctuated by a sniffle and then, _I'll always come back, sweetheart._

"Hey sorry, that engine has been a bitch. I should charge more," she says hurriedly. Rey _should_ charge more for everything, Ben thinks to himself. Her need to feel independent always leads to too many jobs, none of them paying.

They don't have a real schedule to hold on to, their first stop is only three hours away. Rey crosses her apartment in a heartbeat and disappears again. Pipes groan after the door shuts behind her. He takes the time to gather up her luggage, unplugging her phone charger from beside her bed, and grabbing her favorite pillow.

"Alright, I'm ready." She towels her hair, droplets made the fabric of her shoulder cling to her skin. Ben looks out the window as she pulls on a faded pair of Levi's over her boyshorts, a pocket missing on the back. She is radiant in her jubilancy, practically bouncing as she takes his hand and drags him once more down a set of stairs. "Let's go, let's go."

His SUV is modest looking in a sleek, fast way. Rey yawns in the passenger seat and turns toward Ben, there's no need to watch out the window when she knows every corner and turn. She won't miss it. Summer always makes his hair curly more dramatically at the ends, his ears peeking out again. He pushes his glasses up absentmindedly as he glances at her.

"How's the traitor?" he asks as they enter the strange space that separates their town from the busy interstate. They can feel the presence of its empty streets like sleep behind eyelids.

"Stop calling him that, you're just mad that he-"

"He said that the colony of Roanoke was abducted by aliens. He is a traitor to every intelligent-"

"You gave us a thirty-minute lecture that ended with your theory was cannibalism. So I don't want to hear it. Finn is doing well, I'll tell him you asked."

_Still mad about the Roanoke thing, huh?_ Comes Finns reply much later.

They're too used to silence to work to break it, too familiar with one another to be uncomfortable.

"You should just put on your playlist for your students. Then they won’t be scared of you, you big sap," She reclines her chair a bit and looks over at him.

He gives her an indulgent smile and she knows he would do anything for her. "You can find something else if you don't like it."

"I never said I didn't like it." She picks up his functioning phone from the cup holder next to her scrap of metal and duct tape. His chapstick is in there too, she notes so she can steal it later. "I am curious-"

"Your curiosity is dangerous," he mutters. Rey is silent and inquisitive, Her forearm is pressed against his on the center console as she scrolls through his music account.

_Gym. Work. Writing. Editing. Test Grading. Rey._

***

Rey's phone falls to the ground as they exit the car. She doesn't notice, she's too focused on how unaware she is of everything that surrounds her. The sky is plain and unassuming, the woods are empty of that menacing miasma replaced with thrilling bird song. There are no ravens speaking with ancient tongues or deer dashing away from something unseen. It's all so hopelessly normal.

It leaves her unbalanced and suddenly homesick.

"How many times do I have to offer to replace this thing?" Ben asks as he dips to pick up her flip phone that no longer closes and is half-tape. Her luggage is in the same large hand that holds the strap of his own at the same time. Rey tells herself to not notice it, and to _stop looking at his hands, Rey!_

"It still works," she mutters, it doesn't feel like a handout with Ben but it's not in her nature to accept gifts. Her birthday is a nightmare for him, resorting to mailing gifts so she can't not take it. There is a week that piles of boxes show up at her garage from an irritated UPS driver who's not used to the longer route. Every Organa-Solo-Skywalker somehow knows exactly what to buy her. She convinced that there's a group chat about her, but doesn’t have the evidence to support the theory, yet.

Her shoulders tense when she finally looks up at the hotel that Ben has chosen to be their first stop.

"This is awful," is all Rey can say about the cheery two-story building. The wide balcony that stretches between thin pillars that remind her of the plantations further south. The building feels old despite the new paint and proud sign.

"What's that one show we watch, bb8? You know _'eyes close, head first, can't lose.'_ " Ben goes and presses his free hand against the small of her back. She goes a little reluctantly.

"Brooklyn Nine-Nine, you dork. We skyped specifically to watch it."

That's not quite true, Ben, who prefers crime dramas, pointed his computer camera at his tv so she wouldn't miss the winter premiere of her favorite show after a screwdriver pierced her own television. An incident that makes her very red whenever Ben tries to pry answers from her.

"So this was originally built as a hotel," Rey starts, trying to remember all the details in Ben's file.

"The tavern was added on later and the available rooms were used as part as a brothel." He uses the same articulate speech he saves for lectures and Rey has the fleeting idea that she should enroll in a larger college.

"Right in the late eighteen hundreds." Rey bobs her head.

"Except during the prohibition, it became a speakeasy and used the hotel as a cover."

"Not bad so far, what makes it haunted?" She says, knowing she doesn't want to know the answer but hungers for it.

"I'm sure the dead sex workers are still pretty pissed. There was a police raid that killed six patrons as they were trying to escape. They think eleven more died in the fire caused by rival rum runners."

"Wait, it was burned down?" she squeaks, pressing her lips together to contain how high pitched her voice has become.

"They found the original blueprints and rebuilt on the foundations as a historical sight." Ben shrugs, still pushing her toward the front door.

"That's the stupidest fucking thing that they could've done," Rey mutters and leans into his side.

"They kept the tunnels they used to bring in alcohol and the owner will let us go in."

"Of course you're taking into some creepy hole with dead bodies in it," Rey groans and presses her face against his arm.

"I'm sure they've moved the dead bodies by now," Ben quips dryly. His deep voice isn't made for humor but Rey laughs under her breath anyways. "It'll be fun."

"'It'll be fun,' he says."

The interior is as relentlessly lovely as the outside, complete with an art deco theme in its furniture and stain-glass windows. The elderly lady that seems as old as the two-hundred-year-old foundations congratulates them on their wedding and passes of keys to the honeymoon suite as Rey's eyebrows migrate permanently to her hairline.

"It's supposed to have the most activity," Ben offers in lieu of an apology, glancing at the color on each other's cheek and looking away just as quickly.

The room is beautiful, with all jewel tones and wood panels and velvet couches.

"I'm going to set up the cameras," Ben mumbles as Rey steps forward to touch the heavy canopy. The blue fabric is run through with silver thread to depict stars and comets dancing over the enormous bed and it's matching linens. Fresh lilies sit in a very breakable crystal vase that seems like a poor décor choice in a hotel invested by disgruntled spirits. It doesn't feel haunted, Rey thinks for the first time, echoing what Ben says every time they go into a building. There isn't a presence that Rey can feel on the edge of her senses.

Rey continues her sweep of the room. The single bed doesn't bother her, she's slept next to Ben countless times. On floors, in sleeping bags, in overall questionable places, but never a bed. It's wide enough even for Ben's massive frame. Even the bathtub is large enough for both of them. Rey turns back to Ben and unfortunately says the first thing that comes to mind.

"It's weird having a camera at the end of the bed like we're filming a sex tape," she says just as he presses the recording button, catching the entire sentence on tape.

Ben, who's hair is curled to an impossible degree in the humidity, pops up to stand at his full height. There's color in both of their cheeks again for different reasons. "It's not like-"

"Right, right. I mean-" Rey tries to complete his sentence for him but whatever she had meant to say died on her tongue.

"Yeah," Ben finishes with garbled inelegance and stares at his sanctioned side of the bed as if it just asked him to unravel the secrets of the galaxy. Or maybe he's realizing that they've never slept together in this type of adjacency. They both jump when Rey's stomach growls.

"Are you ever not hungry?" He grumbles, the tension broken, and continues to adjust the cameras so that every corner is covered with a lens.

"Do you think the ghost will go through our stuff?" Rey asks and looks over his shoulder at the electronics he's fiddling with. She can take a transmission apart and put it back together but the high tech piece Ben lugs around leaves her equal parts confused and fascinated. There's a faint inch to take them apart to see how they work, Ben would probably let her if she asks.

"If ghosts were real they would," he says loudly, already trying to provoke them. Rey rolls her eyes at his antics. A hotel would be a good place to live forever, new folks every day, free housekeeping. Better than the tunnel Ben is going to drag her into.

"Let's go get you something to eat, you human garbage disposal," he says good-naturedly and then his hand is in her hair, long fingers running against her scalp, and she can not possibly sleep in the same bed as this man. Within arm's reach like this, she can feel the baritone of his voice when he asks, "you okay?"

"Yeah." She sighs a little unevenly. "Just hungry."

For an instant, it reflects in his eyes, knowing in a way, then it's gone again with that crooked smile she loves in its place. Warmth curls in her chest and sinks until her jaw tightens. The moment is suspended with them standing too close. That carnal thing between them flickers in and out of existence, waiting, prowling, ready to lunge when one of them is brave enough to step forward. They aren't, so it slinks and recedes like the inevitable tide until Rey takes a shuddering breath and settles with his hand in hers.

Dinner in the parlor is complete with the landlady claiming a seat with them and telling them the complete history of the building. Ben has already had it outlined but listens intently, that mind of his desperate for knowledge. The landlady, Ester, because of course, the lady who lives with ghosts has a sweet name, tells them that she'll show them the basement but she refuses to go down.

"The room next to yours is where the courtesan, Lucy Renalda, was murdered by a jealous lover with her own pantyhose. Terribly rude of him, like killing a plumber with his own plunger. She likes to sing, ol' Lucy." Ester leans in over her ice tea, that peculiar Virginian accent curling at the edges. "She's horribly off-key."

When they laugh, she adds slightly more seriously, "Don't tell her that, she's been stealing forks ever since."

"We'll have to set up the audio recorders too," Rey reminds him but tells her that he already did. Ester gives them access to the other rooms to explore seeing that they're the only two guests for the evening in the middle of the week.

"I don't sleep here anymore. One night years and years ago, Lucy's singin' turned to screamin', it was the anniversary of her death, you see." Ester looks terribly saddened by it, empathetic for a woman she's never meet and burdened to hear her greatest horror. "It's not for another few months, not to worry. I always close the place down so she can have her privacy."

"That's very kind of you," Ben says. It contrasts sharply against every disbelieving exclamation and taunts, but it's still soft in his mouth. Strange for a moment like this for her to love him deeper for it. That's nothing new but the depth is surprising, like the shelf dropping off into something unseen far, far below. Rey shakes herself, their relationship has always been strange and haunted, a chase and capture.

"I think we might get something on camera tonight." 

Rey is practically bouncing by the time they make their way back up the stairs. Ester trusted them with the keys to the establishment, briefly pointing in the direction of the basement, and warning them to be careful and to be respectful. She gave Ben a stern look when she said the last part. His chin jerked back a little, but he didn't deny her suspicions.

"Yeah and you can finally convince me that ghosts are real," he deadpans.

"You believe in ghosts as much as I do."

"Whatever you say, sweetheart." 

There it is again, that word in his mouth and his hand in hers, and her toes curling in her worn sneakers. When did they- that's right, Rey had begun to tug on his wrist back toward their room. Somehow the action felt childish, so she had shifted her hand, her palm sliding against his. Ben had threaded their fingers together and hadn't let go like he has so many times before. It had used to calm her, center her in dark rooms, and echoing spaces, now it made her heart race. It's just _holding hands,_ she tells herself firmly, but it's not. She knows it, Ben knows it, Lucy and every other presence most likely knows it wherever they're watching from.

"Do you hear that?" Rey goes stock still in the middle of the hall, jerking Ben to a stop. When he opens his mouth, she shushes him sharply. They both stop to listen, a faint humming behind the door. It's beyond sound and quiet and peaceful and-

"It's just the wind." Ben denies it with an infuriating grin that makes her mouth purse. "Let's go check the equipment and grab our cameras."

"Do you think Lucy would leave an EVP?"

"That's a good idea, but you have to go in there by yourself." He squeezes her hand when her face screws up a bit.

"She will and I'll finally be able to wipe that dumb grin off your face," she says with sudden confidence or maybe just her own hyped-up bravado. Rey marches right into Lucy's room a few minutes later with an evp recorder around her wrist.

"Alright, good luck." Ben is enjoying this far too much, Rey thinks as she scowls at him even after the door is shut between us.

She sucks in a breath and whirls at the room, not wanting anything to settle on the edge of her vision for too long. Relief is a living, corporal thing when she turns to an empty room. It's decorated much like her own suite, but there is a vanity with a small plaque at the top of the mirror that is dedicated to Lucy. A small information pamphlet gives the previous history of the room. Rey blushes a little, realizing she was too distracted to see if one was in her own room.

Then the humming starts again. Rey exits her skin so violently as if she is being pursued by a bear, goosebumps running down her arms. The hair on the back of her neck pulls at her nape when the noise stops.

"Hello, I'm Rey," she goes in a shaky voice. "I'm here with the dumbass in the hall."

_…Hello…_

It's distinctly feminine and ringing like church bells. Not like at a wedding, but a mournful funeral march.

"Don't be scared, don't be scared," Rey mutters to herself because she can do this. It was a mere whisper, but it was very, very close. It felt like someone very lightly traced the shell of her ear with their fingertips. Rey's warm blood body is suddenly cold and clammy. Her eyelashes flutter against the light-headedness, and where is Ben?

"Do you have anything you would like to say today? To me? Perhaps into the recorder?" It's a whimper and a plea, and she is absolutely terrified that Lucy will answer and dreading that she won't.

_…Stay away from the men in the tunnels…_

"Okay! Great! Cool! Thank you, I'll be on my way." Her voice is so tight that she’s surprised her teeth and tongue didn't crack. This was going to be a long road trip if this was how it was going to unravel. Rey dashes from the room, colliding into Ben's chest and wraps her arms around his middle with every ounce of her considerable strength. His arms are heavy around her as she trembles harder when the humming starts again behind her. "I'm not going into the basement, not right now."

"Alright scaredy-cat, we can just go to bed." He rubs the space between her shoulders. Even though Rey is positive that she will _never sleep again_ she doesn't argue against his plan, not when his lips are against her hair.

Rey has toiletries in each of Ben's properties. A toothbrush in his family's summer house, her favorite shampoo in his apartment near the university. But sharing a room with him is a new level of intimacy never reached with a pair of sleeping bags. Rey mentions that she'll check the recordings in the morning when they're not as fresh in her mind, to prove that there was definitely _something._ It's a clockwork thing to use the bathroom, to change into their sleep clothes. Rey back in her boyshorts and shirt pilfered from Ben a summer past. He's in low lying pajama pants and another shirt that Rey wants to steal.

Wordlessly, they tuck themselves in.

"You know I have to turn the light off, right?" Ben asks with a yawn even when Rey has never been so awake in her entire life. Like that one time that she took revenge by drinking his entire coffee after he blew on the back of her neck on that bridge when she was fifteen and he needed a break before finals week.

"Would you mind holding my hand?" Rey asks in a quiet voice hardly able to even call a whisper as the light clicks off. His hand bumps into her thigh and he is suddenly as awake as she is. There's a groan that Ben decidedly thinks is just the pipes. Every little noise, the wind outside, the settling of the old building make her scoot closer. He has always found the idea of ghosts to be interesting, in an unperceivable way, he's never been grateful for them.

Then Lucy starts humming again and Rey loses every pretense of pretending not to be scared as she jumps next to Ben. He laughs in a sleepy way, low in his throat.

"Come here, sweetheart," he murmurs, tired again and terribly relaxed next to her. Sitting in the car for three and a half hours had drained him, but he wasn't going to admit it if Rey wanted to duck into each room with that feverish thirst for more that he loves. Ben shifts until his arm snakes under Rey's neck, opening his side up to her. Rey dives for the spot at his ribs, fitting far too snuggly for him to not notice.

"Go to sleep, baby." 

He can feel the way her chin tilts to look up at him in the darkness, but he's already asleep.

***

Lucy stops singing at three am.

Ben had turned in his sleep and has been snoring softly against her hair for over two hours. Her cheek is still pillowed against his extended arm. When his other hand gripped her hip, she had become very aware of her rapid heartbeat. To save her from cardiac arrest, his hand shifted, pulling her more tightly against him and fingers spanning over her spine and down, down, down. Stopping at her lower back, his pinky dipping under the waistband of her underwear, she could feel him melt deeper into the mattress.

Rey is made of heat and silent death from the tension that coils tightly in her core.

"You okay?" he mumbles in the middle of the witching hour. Ben's hand is running up her side until he's brushing her hair off of her cheek, landing heavily on the side of her neck in his half-asleep state. Their legs are tangled together, and Rey needs to put space between them immediately. Her hands tighten in the fabric of his shirt at the thought.

"I can't sleep," she whispers back.

"We're going to have a lot of sleepless nights," he murmurs and she blushes at the connotation that she knows he doesn't mean. A deep hum rumbled in his throat startles her until he goes, "Want to go look for ghosts?"

"Sounds like a bad idea," Rey grumbles.

"So you're in?" He laughs, breath fanning out over her skin.

"Let's do it."

***

Beside her, Ben is alert but by no means awake. His eyes are half-lidded and squinting against the harsh light of their flashlights. The air is heavier, something he doesn't notice, but Rey can feel brushing against her ankles.

"We could just turn the lights on," he mumbles, dark lashes touching. His hair is disheveled, brushing against the rim of his glasses, like when he came home and wrote the majority of his dissertation in her garage. The times that he's only running on ten extra shots of espresso and Rey poking him in the ribs to keep him from passing out onto his research. Or maybe that's what he looks like when he— Rey drops the keys onto the plush, ruby red carpet under her sandaled feet.

"That would be too The Shining," Rey mutters. The keys jangle and clank in her hands as she fumbles through to door tags.

Ben blinks several times and then his camera dips down to follow his gaze, "Rey, where are your pants?"

Her legs are very much bare under his shirt that reaches her thighs. She didn't bother to brush her hair that curls behind her ears, or put a bra on for that matter.

"Oh, huh." Her mouth works a few times but nothing comes out, so instead, to cover up her embarrassment, she goes, "Is there a uniform to hunt ghosts?"

Rey turns just in time to catch his yawn and how he scratches his stomach, pulling the hem of his sleep shirt up away from the waistband of his pajama pants. She's never noticed the trail of hair— the unlit crystal, flush mount fixture on the ceiling become suddenly the most interesting thing Rey has ever laid eyes on.

"You got a point, sweetheart."

Rey's spine does not curl a little at the drowsy roughness of his voice.

They go into each of the rooms, calling out to anything that lingers. Rey politely asking them to leave a recording and Ben too tired to provoke them for once.

The air is cold and Ben yawns again. An attentiveness slips along her tender spine, just beneath the skin. Lucy's warning is tolling like her clear voice when she and Ben stand in front of the door that leads to the basement.

Ben opens the door to a roaring blackness that stretches away from them and pushes against Rey's chest. Her ears pop with the sudden change in air pressure, Ben paws at his ear absentmindedly. Something is down there; beckons beneath the surface of the rippling black.

Ben starts down completely unfazed.

"Well, it doesn't smell great," He announces, already halfway down the staircase. Rey grips the back of his shirt, practically climbing up his back as the dark brushes against her.

"Are you going to hide behind me the entire time?"

It's a genuine, sleep-soaked question with none of his regular playful mockery.

"Easy to do when you're so broad," she huffs. 

Rey creeps around to his side to stand next to him, unabashedly grabbing his hand. Their twin beams light up the storage space, cluttered with boxes and unused furniture. Something lurks behind them; Rey is used to the sensation of the woods around her garage watching her. The way unseen things often do, this is different. Proactive and unsettled.

Ben looks around before turning, pointing to the covered tunnel tucked under the staircase they came down, "I thought it would be more secret."

The door is wide, metal, and locked with three deadbolts and a chain. "Six people died in there?"

Ben shrugs and starts undoing the restraints, each slap of the lock pulling back pulls Rey's shoulders tighter together. It opens with an unexpected silence not interrupted by her breathing.

Logically, she knows that the human eye's perception is not made for the night, acting frantically to try to fill the void. However, the hall should not be shifting.

"Should have brought jackets," Ben comments, looking pointedly at her bare legs.

"You feel that chill too?" Her brows rise at him.

"It's a subterranean tunnel, Rey," he says flatly, pointing his flashlight at the sweating walls. They still haven't stepped into the space.

"Ghostbox?" she suggests evenly, trampling her fear with her need to prove Ben wrong.

"Yes," he deadpans. The overgrown tree could at least try to look unnerved. "That is what will make the spirits nice and talkative, that screaming patch job you call a radio."

"It's not a radio," she corrects. "It scans frequencies, creating white noise for ghosts to manipulate."

He waves at her to continue. They still haven't stepped over the threshold.

Ben winces at the loud buzz that slams against the stretched silence. There is a look of mischief when he looks at her and back at the tunnel.

"Absolutely not," she says right as he opens his mouth, already knowing what he wanted to suggest. "If there is anyone in there, or would like to speak with us?"

The static of the ghost box grows louder as they wait.

_…NO…_

It's sharp and mechanical, devoid of emotion, and somehow that makes it worse than Lucy's whispers.

"You said one word doesn't count," ben says. He is smug enough to make her forget her spike of panic to glare at him.

"If you would, please say at least three words to make this dumbass shut up." Rey sighs, her sleeplessness and anxiety pulling her in different directions.

_…fuck the police…_

"Reasonable," Ben bobs his head, his expression a mask of seriousness. His mouth purses and Rey knows he's trying not to laugh.

"You have problems with authority," she mutters.

Rey flips the ghost box off and yawns widely. The churning nothingness that reaches from beyond her flashlight no longer bothers her, rendered mundane by cantankerous, dead gangsters.  
Ben wraps an arm around her, rubbing her arm in that comforting way since those first cool snaps of autumn chased their heels. Rey feels a sense of loss, knowing the seasons with pulling them apart again.

"Let's go back to bed, sweetheart."

Rey peers up at him through her lashes, wondering if her mind was imagining things when it sounded like he savored it.

***

Their morning had been hands on her waist and her arms winding around his neck and noses brushing together and-- wide eyes and scooting away from each other, desperately asserting space and loud exclaims of needing the restroom.

Rey had said farewell to Lucy, never picking up any audio, insisting she had heard a murmur against her neck like a lover’s kiss. At least what Rey imagined a kiss to her neck to feel like, a soft brush of chapped skin that dragged the chill from her bones. Her short trysts with others in her town normally ended quickly after she pushed their hands away from the hem of her jeans. They had never bothered to kiss her neck; the thought left her perturbed.

Leaning back into the driver's seat, Rey huffed a little. She glanced at Ben reclined next to her, his large legs folded into the small space and arms crossed over his chest.

When she asked him if he was tired, he had stuttered and mumbled, "No, I slept— good, I slept really good."

That was all he was willing to reveal to her, his ears pink stuck out from his messy morning hair. Rey knew secrets pulled from something were only half-truths, so she waited for them to be given to her freely.

In sleep, his lips parted for something soft to be said, too low for Rey to hear. She looked at him again out of the corner of her eye, the slight bends in the road between leaning pines demanded much of her attention. With one hand, she dragged the rough callous at the base of her fingers up the column of her throat. There was a tug below her navel that made her jolt upright, returning her hand to the steering wheel with a smack.

The sound made Ben shift in his seat, but Rey kept her eyes forward with a newfound focus. The heat drained when his arm moved to lay across the console, his hand dangling over the inside of her thigh, and pads of his fingers graze her bare skin with every small movement of the road.

_That's fine,_ her entire body is on fire, but _this is fine._

Rey let her head hit the cushion of her seat, both hands clenched the steering wheel to fight the urge to press her legs together.

Ben sleeps for another hour, Rey's jaw hurts.

Driving from pavement to gravel rouses Ben. She knows because she can see his head turn toward her in her peripheral, eyes fluttering open and closed again. He finally moves this hand-- only to skim the back of his knuckles over her arm, tracing her bicep.

"Hey sweetheart," comes garbled and does something funny to Rey's breathing. Eyes forward, she does not note how his shirt slides up when he does his best to stretch in the confines of his seat. His eyes are closed again, brow furrowed in determination to keep them that way. "We there yet, baby?"

Her breath hitched, throwing her voice into a new pitch. "Nope, just hungry."

"You're always hungry," he grumbles, tightening his arms over his chest.  
With the car parked, she had the chance to look at him fully and to realize he's not wrong.

"Come on, Ben," she says softly, pulling at his arm. "I bet they're still serving breakfast. They might even have that blueberry syrup you like."

He scrubs his hands over his face, groaning into his palms and— Rey stumbles out of the car, slamming the door behind her, jumping a little at the noise and smiling sheepishly at Ben's surprised expression.

Their hostess and waitress set them up in a booth by the windows with a view of the empty highway. The little dinner reminds her of home, deceptively sleepy and slow. The interior is bright and cheery, but the man across the space has ducked further into his newspaper. The red and orange and yellow theme unsettles Rey for reasons she couldn't understand. They weren't the flashy colors of a snake or dart frog, but even monarch butterflies are poisonous. If she's careful, she can see the lies that hide under this muted veil.

She told herself to not ignore her gut, to calm down. It was all too like her own little town, the crocodile waiting to take anyone who stayed to the edge for too long. The way the foster home kept her, the way she aged out but was afraid of change, the way her garage became home. How the trees listen and the deer watch. A wilderness that grew in her chest until she only recognized the green of her hazel eyes that were not hers but belonged to the wood. This was a place that wasn't to be left.

"You okay?" Ben placed a gentle hand on top of hers where they trembled on the table. Her garage wasn't home, summer was and the companion she kept. She turns her hand over, her fingers lightly against his steadfast pulse under the pale skin of his wrist.

Rey is not stuck, she hasn't been left behind again.

She took a deep breath and the diner melted into the mundane, "I am, now."

***

The wings outstretched from the main hospital came with some comfort. Relief in the sense that Rey was safe from sleeping in the same bed as Ben. Next to him in a sleeping bag would be more familiar to her. Being woken up with gentle fingers in her hair and him murmuring against her forehead has left her entirely unbalanced. Something in her had shaken off her isolation and left her wanting. It wasn't dissimilar to forgetting a meal and not realizing how ravenous she is until the food is in front of her. Only much, much more demanding.

The building was impossibly long; it would take hours to walk the length of the halls in all three stories. In the dark.

"I get why, if ghosts were real, a place like this would be haunted." Ben said beside her, "all the torture and general health hazards."

"That's fair." Rey nodded, frowning at the manicured estate surrounding the building that was once named an asylum. She hoped they weren't still screaming. There was a hum in her ear, the way a moth's wing flutters against her skin. The glossy leaves of the hedges aren't moving.

The hospital, a term Rey uses loosely, boasts tours during the day, closing at sunset. She has no idea how Ben managed to get permission to stay overnight.

"It wasn't a big deal." He shrugged, and she knows he's lying. They stay looking up, trying to pinpoint what exactly disturbed them. The history, the peeling paint, the handprint smudged on the windows. It was a slumbering beast that cracked its maw open into the growing night, light glinting off windows like teeth. Rey took hold of Ben's hand to halt the slithering thing from traveling farther up her spine. "You ready?"

"This is the worst place you've ever taken me." She grimaces at him but tugs on his hand.

"I don't know, there's that demon house down south."

"There's the _what?"_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one comment = one rush of serotonin 🥺
> 
> find me on [twitter @madsaialik](https://twitter.com/madsaialik)


	3. Chapter 3

"What's the weirdest thing your students have called you?" Rey asks at random to keep her mind from melting in despair in the darkened asylum. Their steps echoed in the large space, the hall so long that the beams of their flashlights faded into a pure, stirring black.

"Supreme Leader isn't weird enough for you?" Ben says beside her, at complete ease. The atmosphere is different here. The tunnels had been curious of its visitors, playfully ruffling Rey's hair in the windless corridor. The asylum was obviously sick of its constant company moving about the building in herds of frightened groups. Whatever lingered may have been originally in a state of unrest, now turned sinister.

Rey turns to see if Ben, doubtfully, felt that same sense of unease, but when she looked up a small snort came out instead of a question. "Oh, for sure— why is your face red, now you have to tell me."

"There were… a few students who—" he stammers and refuses to look at her, taking his job of searching for paranormal evidence seriously for once. Ben swung his light and camera around to investigate yet another coffin-sized room where Rey was sure at least three people died.  
She put her foot in the jamb as the door slowly swung shut on its own. 

"Spit it out, Benjamin."

"Daddy."

Something nudges her into the room, making her trip over her own shoelace into Ben's back. She would have apologized or maybe bitched at the ghost's rudeness if she wasn't laughing.

"I'm glad you find that amusing," he grumbles as she muffles her mirth between his shoulder blades. She steps around him, tugging at the end of his hair.

"I don't know, I guess I can see it," she says with a smirk as he swallows, before shrugging and yanking the door back open. Rey says over her shoulder, "Maybe in a parallel universe I would be into it."

The asylum does not approve of her new attitude, apparently, Rey noted with each muffled bang.

"The building is settling." Ben wrote off at once.

A scream erupts from below them, making Rey jump, shoulders curling like a cat as she lands and pressing herself into Ben's side. It’s strange, this fear she feels in this place, astute in nature and alive. Wild and beautiful with how Ben grins at her, it makes her chest ache with the intensity of each emotion that churns like the air. Something like unrest, demanding and stirring, Rey can't comprehend or fold it into words. Maybe she doesn't want to yet.

"Wind," he said calmly with a shrug, wrapping an arm around her anyways.

They continued to traipse through the current level. Rey stays light on her feet next to his heavy tread until at one point Ben pushes her behind him as a door slammed shut.

"Must be a draft." His tone was so easy that she wanted to yell at him for it, instead she pulled her tongue through her teeth. The chipping paint pops as he puts his shoulder against it. "Seems like a good place to call it a night."

Rey looks at him dubiously before taking in the hellscape he wants her to sleep in. Already, a branch scrapes across the window in a whisper and warning.

"Should we check for any entities first?" she asks as she tried to keep the camera upright while digging around for the spirit-box.

"If there are any ghosts in here, please kill me before she turns that on."

Rey sighs, "Ben, why are you like this?"

He shrugged with a grin, turning to run his flashlight over the flaking walls. Rey threw a cursory glance around, not liking this one bit. A shiver running down her spine when it seemed like shadows retreated from the sudden intrusion of light. She relaxed a little when Ben's attention caught on the ceiling, looking like an oversized puppy.

"I'm not saying I ever want to sleep in places like this," he started, "but, I don't think I'll mind tonight."

Rey fiddled with her equipment and nearly dropped the damn thing when she finally looked up.

"It's like the Sistine Chapel in a pair of bunny ears," Ben says, turning to look at it better. A pin-up model stretched out above them complete with a yellow, sweetheart cut bodice and matching headpiece.

"Huh," Rey said, ghost box forgotten as she looked up dumbfounded, "that's amazing, how did they get up there?"

"I think we have enough mystery on our hands." He smiled as bright as the paint above them. "Will this room work for you?"

"Yeah, not the company I was expecting, but she's pretty hot." Rey shrugs before placing the spirit box down to undo her sleeping bag. She ignores how he deflated with relief that she wasn't forcing him to listen to the static. It's a good instrument and scientifically proven to— she didn't want this argument again, not even with herself.

Ben's sleeping bag unrolls next to her at a respectable distance away that she frowns at, though unsure why it irritates her so much.

There's a sudden bang that left Rey more surprised that he reacted at all than startled by the abrupt noise. Ben had just stood to fix their night-vision cameras up for the evening when something in the hall decided to tell them goodnight.

Struck for the second time that evening with how utterly empty her mind went in surprise, Rey could only stare. Under his plaid shirt, Ben bristled defensively at the noise, shoulders tense as he stepped directly in front of Rey. He seemed impossibly bigger with how his chest and back expanded in a deep breath, settling to wait for the danger to pass.

With a snort, he seems to relax. "I thought I heard some kids running around."

Rey feels the urge to reassure him that maybe he did, but her tongue is like cement in her mouth. Something strange in her throat when the corner of his mouth quirked up at her, she swallowed past it and said, "I guess this is where we're sleeping since we're fucking idiots."

***

Ben wonders if sleeping next to Rey has ruined him.

The building continues to shift around them as she tosses and turns beside him. On his back with his hands clasped together, he sighs.

The wind whistles through the cracked glass, humming over his skin. She rolls onto her side to face him, Ben actively kept his eyes closed to not look at her in the dim light. 

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what? Go to sleep, baby."

He tensed as the term of endearment slips out again, a word soaked in memories and time spanned between them. For him, perhaps only him, the meaning had shifted from teasing to—

_Turn your flashlight off, baby._

_You can hide behind me, baby._

_I've got you, baby._

Teasing to— to— he ground his teeth together, he doesn't know.

A breeze kicks up, rasping through the air.

"Ben!" and the sharp noise of a zipper was the only warning he receives before Rey tugs at his own sleeping bag.

While he moves to sit up, Rey gave up trying to part the fabric that separates them to fling her arms around his neck with her forehead against his cheek. 

"You're shaking."

"Something keeps touching me," she whispers, annoyed under the tremors, "and I can't punch it."

Ben laughs and the room flinches. He shifts and pulls back to unzip himself from the cocoon that feels suddenly too tight anyways. There's no hesitation in the way she moves closer, how she tucks herself under his chin and sighs against his chest.

Soon, with his hand rubbing circles between her shoulder blades, Rey grows heavy with sleep.

As dawn came and scared off the shadows, it's hard to write off the bewilderment that kept him awake as something as simple as a fever dream or even sleep deprivation when everything is on tape. In the back seat, hunched against the door with his knees bent and tangled haphazardly in his seat belt at Rey’s insistence, Ben stares at the green and black screen of his laptop.

She had fallen asleep with her toned calves boxing his thighs and the scent of her hair under his nose, and then everything went to hell. Ben had tried to unlink her fingers from behind his back, so he could lay back, a mistake given the frustrated noise she made. Instead of going limp against him, Rey _moved._

Her arms moved to pull herself up against his torso, hands sinking into his hair. Ben could still feel the phantom tug that yanked at something inside him even now, hours later.

_"Ben," she murmured into his neck as her nose and bottom lip dragged up the column of his throat._

Rey says the same thing now, quirking an eyebrow at him in the rearview mirror. When he pulls out one of his earphones, she tries again, "I said, did you find something? You keep going back."

"How can you tell?" He swallows past the roughness in his voice.

"Every two minutes you click your keyboard really hard, I figured you were going over the footage. That and you have your skeptic face on." Her shoulder moves in a shrug as her eyes stay focused on the road.

It was only for two minutes? He could have lived in this window of time for a lifetime. Ben absently makes a noncommittal grunt as he backs the video up.

His arm moves behind him to undo her hands around his middle, her arms already moved and hands sinking into his hair.

_"Ben."_

He can still feel her lips ghosting over his skin, a sensation he tries to rub away even as it still haunts him.

_"Ben," she said again, a whisper barely caught by their audio recorders and loud in his memory, her breath rustling his hair and fanning over the sensitive skin his ear. Rey hummed in her sleep, her cheek brushing against his as she turned her head to— this is when she kisses him. Her mouth slightly parted, enough for her teeth to scrape lightly against the line of his jaw. The fabric covering her hips, another one of his shirts, wrinkles as his grip tightens._

A door shut somewhere, a loud slam in the feedback that covered his breathy groan he choked on when she rocked just once against him. Ben could feel sweat bead along the back of his neck that wasn't caused by the warm summer morning, but the lingering sensation of heat pressed against his groin.

Ben moves his laptop up to his knees, and asks, "How long have we been driving?"

"It’s only been an hour so far, Ben.”

He can still hear how her lips shaped his name over the marks of his cheek.

_"An hour?"_

"Well, you've been really invested with that laptop, I hope it's something good."

_It's you, it's you, it's you. It's your breasts sliding up my chest right as your hands pulled my head back. It's the warm honey of your mouth an inch from mine. It's how you feel against me and the curve of your waist under my palm. It’s you and me discovering what it’s like for you to arch your back for me. It's us losing balance and falling back, this feels like a dream that I can't wake up from even when you blinked at me in the dark._

_"Ben, are you okay?" she asked in a sleepy mumble against his collarbone on his laptop screen._

_"Yeah, sweetheart, go to sleep," he said in that same rasping tone._

_"Goodnight," she said as he rolled them onto their sides, her head pillowed on his arm and sleeping bag thrown over them. "I love you."_

_"I know," he pressed a kiss to her hair, then a second one, "I love you, too."_

Now, he shuts his laptop and lumbers ungracefully in the front seat with Rey swatting at him to get him to put his seat belt on. Summer is short and already he's missed an hour with her, he doesn’t plan on losing any more.

Ben catches her hand, threading their fingers together. Rey smiles easily at him, foolish of him to miss this.

He looks at her smaller hand in his between them and mutters, "it was definitely something.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Rey. Rey. Rey. Rey. Rey._ His mind provides the mantra of years’ worth of something previously unknown. This thing between them, only understood by them, once sweet and calming, now innervated to the point of hyperreality. Ben has watched her nimble fingers take things apart but never once considered how stunning it would feel to be deconstructed like this. There is a sudden spike of fear, what will this clever girl do once she has him undone completely?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can u believe i forgot about this fic even tho it's completely finished,,, i literally just have to post it?? honestly, if someone could just yell at me

The small town should be easy to locate with Ben back in his copilot position after spending the morning on his laptop. Rey ran out of pavement twice with wrong turns and an unwillingness to drive on the gravel any longer than to find a place to turn around. A fork in the road takes them to a wood covered bridge when their map spread out between them tells them no water should be crossed. Time trickles away as Rey becomes more frustrated and Ben slumped drowsily in the seat next to her. Foliage thick with emerald leaves and moss bracket the car, growing past its boundaries and reaches for the wayward vehicle.

Ordinary is the word Rey would use for the road littered with too many unmarked turns and small, distracting touches of Ben's fingers. He traces the scars that line her knuckles where her hand rests on the gearshift out of habit, though he drives an automatic. His thumb and pinky nearly reach one another around her forearm when he gently connects the freckles above her wrist.

"I'm happy we're doing this," he says suddenly, breaking the silence she didn't realize had gathered. Ben is leaning back in his seat, too big and head bent a little to rest on the cushion.

Rey glances from the emerald barricade of the road to his earnest expression, slipping her hand over the center console to his thigh. "My summers with you are worth all those months—" she stops and swallows past her own bitter loneliness because he's here, with her, under her palm. Rey collects herself and tries again when she notices something like melancholy in his features; maybe he already knew how the sentence was going to end, "My summers with you are always the best part of my year."

Her fingers fidget with the inseam of his jeans, fingernail catching against it until his hand covered hers. "Me too."

A break in the trees and sudden flare of late afternoon sunlight marks the town limit.

"We got a little lost," Ben admits at the front counter of their hotel, not advertised as haunted but Rey can feel something _another_ lingering on her senses. The building is old, covered in moss at the foundations, and keeping something inside.

"This forest has a habit of timing things just right," the woman between Rey and Ben in years tells them with the nonchalance of someone who grew up here, she adds with a smile, "normally right around check-in. Your room is upstairs, third door on the left."

"Thank you, ma'am." Rey collects their keys as Ben insists on carrying all of their luggage and equipment. The stairs creak and the hall has dust motes dancing in the slants of bright rays. Rey loves it down to the dark blue, floral carpets and burgundy red walls, and photographs of local history.

The gold plaque on their door reads _The Mayor Suite._

"I guess our honeymoon is over," Rey quips over her shoulder as she jimmies the door open.

Over the pop of the lock and her own huff, it's almost easy to miss him mutter, "I don't think that would be possible with you."

"You say something, babe?" she asks and steps into the room, glancing at one red tip of his ear peeking out from his hair.

"This is, uh, getting heavy, I said," he coughed. "I— what are you doing?"

"Taking my leggings off?" Her brows pull together as she reaches up to unhook her bra under her shirt, shimmying out of the straps. "You're taking me to three different pubs tonight, I want to nap first. Take your jeans off, Ben."

There's a thud of luggage and a rustle as she pulls the comforter back from her side. She slides between the crisp sheets with a sigh as Ben kicks off his jeans. The mattress dips under his weight, pulling her closer to him, meeting in the middle. Both on their sides, Rey twines one of her hands with his as Ben brushes her hair back. _Never close enough,_ Rey thinks she kept to herself, already half asleep against him.

She feels the soft murmur against her temple, the gentle heat of rapport sinking down her spine, _"Then come here, sweetheart."_

***

The scent of honeysuckle, summer heat personified under his nose and breath fanning out over his chest, lips too close to his skin. Rey fitting too well against him, and her slim leg between his. It's Ben holding her too close and being afraid that he's crushing her, even when she mumbles in her sleep, heavy and content _in his arms._ Sleeping with Rey is finally having her in his arms, and that's the worst part because they always wake up.

Waking up next to Rey is absolute hell. She wakes him up by trying to move closer to him one last time, her hand scrunching his shirt and fingernails digging into his back. He tries his damnedest to angle his hips so his erection isn't pressed into her stomach, which only feels harder when her hazel eyes flutter open and find him. There's a sleepy smile on her mouth, and more than anything he wants to—

Ben watches how her eyes close and lips part in the time it takes him to drag himself closer, to press his mouth to the corner of hers. Nothing but her hitched breath and the barrier of fabric between them. He does it again, on her cheek, something in passing that was supposed to be chaste turns warmer. There's the taste of her in his mouth now as he works like a man possessed across her jaw. The jasmine scent of her body wash, the cotton of his shirt, sunlight, and the freshness of greenery tattooed on her skin.

When his lower lip brushes over her rapid pulse on her neck, he freezes, this is too fast. His senses are flooded after he rips his lips from her. The way her ribs expand and crash rapidly under his palm, her hand clutching his bicep. A tang akin to yellow skies and still-hot, fused sand on a windswept beach they stuck lightning rods in, somewhere years ago, now making the hair of her arms stand. There's a flush high on her cheeks when he pulls himself back. Confusion and apprehension fill her too wide pupils.

Too fast, too young, too much.

"Are you okay?" _With this, with me? Did I scare you?_

Her eyes hazy moments before, now bright and alert and molten as they search his. Rey is trembling even when she brings one hand up and brushes his wayward hair behind his ear and whispers, "I'm okay, Ben."

"I should— uh— " he stumbles, _stop staring at her mouth would be a good place to start—_

"It's time to get going anyways," she says and rolls out of bed, and he can't help but wonder why she sounds so disappointed. Isn't that the reason she's here with him, searching for— _something,_ evidence of something more?

***

It wasn't fair, Rey decided as the left The Blind Tiger, the refurbished speakeasy seemingly holding nothing of interest. Even its history was clean of death and shootouts. She glared at Ben's back and the straps that held the small camera to his chest, once again considering how absurdly broad he is. Life has never been particularly fair to her; parents abandoning her and leaving her with hunger pangs and scuffed knees and questions like whether or not she was an orphan.

Finally having someone to soothe the aching desolation, but only for two to three months at a time. Ben Solo kissing her neck with that dumb, soft mouth of his is a new level of injustice the universe has pitted against her. The mattress shifting under them as he pulled away from her is one of the worst sensations she has ever felt, it made her throat tighten up remembering it.

Why had he stopped? A number of insecurities rose to the forefront of her mind-- the age gap yawning between them, every single embarrassing thing she did growing up in front of him, her frame coltish instead of lithe.

He pulls the door to Lockheed's open, smiling softly in that way of his. Asshole.

Like the other establishment, the speakeasy is tucked out of sight. A simple and modern neon sign is its only advertisement when the locals need no help finding it, like when the moonshine was illegal and patrons traipse around that cusp of trees instead of cutting through it.

Immediately, Rey is acutely aware that the interior is hazy. Everything is soft around the edges and glowing gently in the dimmed, golden lights. It didn't feel refurbished, rather so loved and maintained that it was like stepping back into the roaring twenties. It made her at ease even while nape of her neck prickle.

"Y'all must be here for the demon," the bartender says with a bored look and a rag thrown over his shoulder. "Just head down the hall there to the attic, past the bathrooms. It likes to knock on the walls, so don't get too spooked."

Today is not Rey's day.

The hall stretched the length of the bar, bottles being returned to their shelves clinking through the wall. The small kitchen is the first door, followed by two bathrooms, and the last leading to the empty apartment and the attic above. When Rey read Ben's file, there had been no demon. Only a number of odd occurrences that hinted to a haunting from paranormal investigators; small things like empty beer glasses, pictures falling off the wall. Rey suspected that with no deaths linked to the building it was just Ben's excuse to see if a ghost would steal his beer.

The light flickered over the apartment door.

Ben threw up a hand with a face of concentration, a look Rey recognized when his ears were even more disproportionate and limbs gangly.

"That's not how the force works," she laughs. Her earlier annoyance melting with more ease than she would admit, slapping his bicep.

"If you can't use it to fix a loose light lightbulb then what's the point?" He reached up easily, tightening the fixture until it stopped.

"Gratuitous uses like that would get you kicked out of the Jedi Academy, dark sider."

"You say that like you're not wearing Kylo Ren underwear right now."

A cool draft makes her cheeks burn hotter, greeting them gently, almost like the way Ben had kissed—

Rey marches up the stairs. The air is stale, tense rather than undisturbed. It was relatively clean and free of furniture, leaving only a deep quiet and agitation in the blank space.

The bar murmurs under them, a soft beat pressing against the soles of their feet. Something clicked above, a quiet sound, wet and guttural.

"Sounds like a possum in the attic," Ben says and Rey lulls herself into a false sense of security at his presumption. "We should be careful when we go up there."

When they-- _what?_ Rey was about to demand when a creak behind her made the hair of her neck stand. Ben lifts his camera to catch a door slowly swing open, the sound echoing off empty walls. Two knocks, nearly welcoming, resounded from the top of the exposed staircase.

"No," Rey says before she turned around, then looking at the faded white paint and worn path, "fuck no."

"Weird shit has always been more likely to happen to you, remember that cabin where you nearly broke your arm," Ben starts with a devious smile that Rey shakes her head at, "maybe you should go up by yourself."

"I don't like you right now." She growls.

"I'll be right here, sweetheart." The crooked grin turned into a wide smile as he leaned down to kiss her temple, "don't be a baby."

Rey rolls her eyes, he had said the same thing at that damned cabin. A disaster. A deep breath and an iron will have her cross the distance, pausing only for a moment to step over the threshold.

With a sigh and a taunt on the tip of her tongue, Rey looks over her shoulder just as the door slams shut.

"Rey!" is muffled, followed by the handle and frame shaking.

Three knocks, jaunty and uneven. A whisper beyond sound echoed in her mind in a voice that did not belong to her.

_Hide, before I find you._

***

The air pulls and cracks with a thrum. Rey pushes against the door and turns the handle until the old metal creaked under the strain of her arm. At the top of the staircase a thud echoes, a heavy footfall against brittle wood and a knock of something dragging it's knuckles against the wall.

"uncool, uncool, uncool," Rey mutters as her heart gallops, sweat breaks out on the back of her neck. Another thud and she throws her shoulder against the door. It lurches against the frame but refuses to open.

Thud.

"Ben!" Her palm smacks against the shaking door as he tried to yank it open with the might contained in his broad shoulders.

Thud. Knock. Rey jumps and presses her forehead against the door with her eyes squeezed shut. It wasn't a long staircase.

"Hold on, sweetheart." Came distantly followed by the door trembling. "Rey, stand back."

That meant stepping into space with the thing at her back. A thud and tears prick in the corner of her eyes. One deep breath, she inches away from Ben trying to rip the entire handle off. The bottom step bit into her achilles tendon, the sensation shooting up her spine and pulls her shoulders tightly together. Thud, her knees tremble with the need to run. Knock, her lower back hurts from the tension locked in her bones. Rey trusts him to-- I didn't matter, she trusted Ben. Her palm pushes tears away as she sniffles, using her other hand to flip off the empty staircase.

There was certain wrath that Rey had never faced when Ben freed the door. The glare and curled lip softening when Rey says, "Hey, there." 

Where it took at least three steps back to find herself at the bottom step, Ben crossed it one. His plaid shirt is undone on one wrist when his hands came up to cup her face. Lingering panic under her palms on his chest vibrating with a wild pulse, fingers curling into the soft fabric. His thumb brushes a stray tear over her cheekbone then glances over her head with a hardened gaze that pulls her closer. Rey sometimes forgets of the strength that shimmers under his academic façade.

Each touch jolts through her, the initial strike his large hands moving from her jaw and down the length of her throat to her shoulders to crush her to his chest. Their equipment cumbersome, not hindering either of them. Rey notes there is always a natural force between them. The meeting of leader and streamer and finally the flare of lightning that trembles and heats the air on her skin. His scent, heady and the tang of ozone.

The secondary surge of his voice rumbling, asking after her, relief flooding him when it's her reassuring him. That lapse of silence between the strike and following thunder. There had been enough distance and time and emotion that kept him from moving toward her, and yet it was without thought that he reached for her face, stroking a thumb over her parted lips.

Ben's mouth against her like a shockwave, a quiet storm that built upon the horizon now a deluge.

A mere press of lips when a gentle, insistent knock makes her flinch against him and Ben's arms tighten.

"We should find some actual privacy," she whispers against him, indulging in a small nip.

"There's another pub—" he starts, an easy way to slow this down if she took his offer.

"Ben, take me to the hotel." A demand if she weren't breathless and pressed against him. Lacing their hands together has always been a habit, but now she feels the weight of it low in her core. They don't so much walk to the hotel as Ben tugging her along with his long stride and leaning over to press his lips to her hair.

***

_Rey. Rey. Rey. Rey. Rey._ His mind provides the mantra of years’ worth of something previously unknown. This thing between them, only understood by them, once sweet and calming, now innervated to the point of hyperreality. Ben has watched her nimble fingers take things apart but never once considered how stunning it would feel to be deconstructed like this. There is a sudden spike of fear, what will this clever girl do once she has him undone completely?

Nothing would change, he knew, not truly. Their lifelong affinity wouldn't be shiny and new in the morning, Ben was old enough to understand that sex didn't quite work like that. They will always be Ben and Rey, as they were yesterday and will be tomorrow, in every timeline.

He takes measures to gently untangle her from the camera harness, let it slip from his fingers into a lump of straps. Watching her eyes close and head tip back when his hands weave into her hair is surreal. He's seen this before, her face tilted up and bare to the kiss of the sun, now for him and lips just as warm. A sudden possessive streak flares within him, already having known

Rey more deeply than anyone else and now being allowed to unlock the secrets of her skin.

The first button of his shirt was undone when he catches her wrists before they could undo the second. 

Ben leans down to soothe the worried line between her brow, then tilting her chin up to tell her quietly, "If I do anything you don't like, you have to tell me. I'm clean, but I didn't think to bring— I wasn't expecting—"

"This isn't the talk I was expecting." She tilted her head, pupils still wide in the dim light.

" _Safe_ sex is about open communication. Baby, what type of people—" Ben trails off when for the first time, she looks away from him, cheeks a deeper hue. Understanding hits him before she can muster any kind of courage to say anything.

"Ben, I—" Rey chews on her lip before telling him in a rush, "I never found anyone that I trusted the way I trust you."

An acute sense of melancholy washes over him when he had never considered waiting for her. This memory would that much sweeter with none before her, his chest aching for it. Her slim waist under the slide of his palms over the flare of her hips, holding her firmly, a reminder that he was with her now.

"I've got you, sweetheart."

"I know." 

Her lips are still curled at the corners when she reaches up on her toes. Curious nature ingrained into everything she does, from jumping down into caves to how her tongue moves against his. Slower, saccharine, summer condensed into the gentle heat of her mouth. Ben is the first to groan when her fingers pull hesitantly at the hair above the nape of his neck. The second tug is more insistent, keeping him in place even when his hips grind against her lower abdomen. His hands rove down her spine, over the perfect curve of her ass, to cup the back of her thighs and easily dragging her up until it's him leaning his head back.

She tastes like the pomegranate juice he had wiped from her chin earlier with his thumb, accidentally made her laugh mid-sip. So sweet under the wheat and hops lingering between his teeth, Ben licks up into her mouth with every craving he's ever had for her.

Rey feels too small and light in his arms— ankles hardly able to link together against his lower back— a juxtaposition from the bravery and unshakable tenacity he's in love with. He doesn't want to let go even when he presses her into the mattress. A small mewl reverberates along her throat, against his mouth, only making him hold her closer. Somewhere in the back of his mind hazy with the taste of her skin, he’s still mindful of his weight, nearly consumed with how her hips fit against his.

“I’m nervous,” she whispers. Ben leans back on his heels, fighting to let his palms rest on her thighs draped over his. Not knowing what type of comfort she needed— touch or space.

“About what?”

“Not about this, not with you.” Rey writhes a little, all flushed skin and freckles beneath him, but he can’t trace any embarrassment or apprehension. “It’s just when I touch myself I have to work to come, I don’t want to disappoint you if I can’t.”

“We’ll see,” he says with a small jerk of his chin and aplomb that doesn’t normally belong to him, soothed with a small promise.

Ben helps her sit up, easing her out of her shirt and ducks to kiss along the swell of her breasts, scraping his teeth over pebbled skin through the thin fabric of her bra. Fingers splayed over Rey’s sternum, he pushes her softly until she’s on her back, spine arching as he drags his hand down the conditioned lines of her abdomen. He could see how she still gripped the sheets with a quiet trepidation, lining every shiver he drew.

“You could never disappoint me, Rey,” Ben says. Blunt fingernails pulling goosebumps to the surface and hands looking too large against her slender bicep as he helps her bra straps from her shoulders. “So beautiful.”

“What about you? You’re still clothed,” she murmurs and picks at the plaid fabric over his shoulders.

“I don’t need to take anything off for what I want to do to you.”

“And what’s that?” she asks as he marks the uneven rhythm of her ribs with his mouth. Dark waves of hair falling forward, a soft balm to the pink dappled skin in his wake.

“Taste you,” he says above her navel, then against the ridge of her hip, “fully.”

“Oh, _oh_ — Ben—” Rey whimpers as he quickly unbuttons and lets his fingers curl around the hem of her jeans.

“Lift your hips for me, baby.” 

He watches transfixed at the shift of muscle and roll of her hips, the shudder under his knuckles as he drags the fabric down her thighs. Ben moves to kiss the inside of her knee, down the line of the inseam of her jeans embossed on her skin. Too large for the bed, Ben moves to kneel, knees digging into the carpet and pulling her to the first edge of the evening.

Not even the sweetness of her mouth could compare to the honey slick curls between her thighs. The first broad swipe of his tongue makes is met with a shy rock of her hips into his groan, a shiver running down her spine under the palm holding her up and closer. Never once had he felt divine but her molten heat and choked moans could start religions. Her heels seeking purchase against his shoulders a beatitude.

_“Ben—don’t stop, oh—,”_ a soft benediction half lost to a groan when he drags his lips back up her thigh, fingers taking his place in soft strokes. Ben must compose himself with his forehead against her leg, not realizing how responsive she would be until Rey is wrapped tightly around just one finger. Her hips tilt down when he smoothly presses up, marveling how the angle sharpens her moan into a cry.

Rey’s climb is something that comes in increments; he knows somehow when her legs tense and he grins against her clit. Then the small movement of her calf over his shoulder when her toes curl and flex. Even the scent of her arousal shifts slightly tangier as new wetness pools on his palm.

“Ben,” She cries, fingers too tight in his hair.

“Let go, baby,” he murmurs back.

For the first time, his powerful frame felt like it had a purpose, strong enough to support her when her knees go weak and body pliant, as the wave crests and crashes. At every stage of their lives, Ben knew he was made for her.

“I want to make you do that again.” 

He does it twice more because he can until her legs shake and breath only comes in small gasps. The sight of her pretty mouth parted and glassy, hazel eyes darker than he’s ever seen is the only time _pulchritudinous_ has ever crossed his mind.

Vocabulary slips from him entirely he stands to tower over her, a hand planted next to her as his knuckles brush the valley between her breasts. Languid and sated, she’s heavier than when she actively climbing up to him, it’s still easy to scoop her up and pull the sheets back.

“I’ll be right back.” Ben kisses her temple and moves for the bathroom. The washcloth he finds is rough and makes him wince, hoping warm water will make it easier for her. He thinks she’s already asleep when he comes back only for eyelashes to flutter open with a questioning look. It’s quick work to wipe off her inner thighs to keep her from feeling sticky later.

“Thank you,” Rey mumbles as he pulls the comforter up to her chin before rolling onto her side, snoring softly before he closed the bathroom door. The small noise makes his chest too full as he turned the shower on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reylo but throw a demon in there to make them smooch
> 
> just one more update!!! leave a comment or find me on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/madsaialik)


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey has always known, his love is reserved and perennial, unconditional and profound, in a way she can’t describe but everyone in their orbit can see.

It’s still dark when Rey wakes to bird song and heat. To her, it’s a surprise that she’s not sore when the stretch of his fingers was so much different than her own. Her joints are strangely loose and heavy as she stretches languidly under the arm thrown over her stomach. The dim outline of Ben's cheekbone is bathed in the red light of an old clock.

The color suits him, Rey thinks as she runs her fingers over smooth, mole-dotted skin of his face until his larger hand catches her hands. Lips find her pulse under her wrist before letting her palm settle on the planes of his face again, unruly curls brushing her skin. 

Her cheeks are flush, the color hidden in lingering darkness that clings to the shadows before sunrise. Only two hours had passed since-- since-- Rey clears her throat to right her thoughts, self-sabotaging when the action only makes Ben pull her into his bare chest.

Gone was the plaid shirt that was soft against her back of her knees and where her heels dug into his shoulder blades. Ben’s bare skin surprises her, igniting a new exploratory sensation in her fingertips. Her hands replaced by her lips on his collarbone, an unfamiliar action she somehow recognized. Rey’s body at least knew what to do when her inexperience hinders her-- sated in the witching hour has shed off any insecurities-- this is still Ben and Rey. Anything introduced this night to be explored again rather than shunned and embarrassed by. She kisses up his neck delicately while he wakes slow and happy. 

Ben waking to a naked and reactive Rey in his arms sinks lower into the mattress beneath her. Her toned legs straddle his waist with one knee bent at his side. He traces the tan line on her thigh where he knows her skin lightens a shade in the dark of their room. A place he had first noticed last summer when she had shucked off her shorts at his house, revealing a one-piece covering the tight lines of her stomach he’s now tasted. Every detail about her seemed to force him to notice her; the different smiles she crafted just for him, how her hand finds him no matter how dark their surroundings, the strength in the lithe line of her body as she dives gracefully into the pool. 

He wonders if she had ever ached the same way he did and for how long that bittersweet torture lasted. 

For five years Rey thought of Ben in building degrees of unbecoming girlish fantasy fueled by hormones and fondness. Dreams of chaste kisses and hand-holding, neither as sweet as his breath on her thigh or her fingers raking through his thick hair. Whatever it was growing in her chest for him froze, leaving her bereft when summer was long from over. 

“Rey,” he says quietly, brushing her hair back and tucking it behind her ear. She doesn’t respond but moves up, her body sliding against his to cover his mouth with her own. 

She is afraid, not of the warm ache or him moving against her, but not letting herself experience for something as juvenile as fear. Rey would face it as she had everything in her life, undaunted and steadfast. 

As Ben wakens properly and grows stiffer against her thigh throw over him, he reaches to a bedside lamp. The poor light not harsh enough to make them flinch from its interruption but break apart a few inches. Ben’s wide pupils are hidden from her, half-lidded and dark. 

“Give me something to remember when summer is over,” she whispers, “please, Ben.” 

Her ardent plea is his undoing. He rolls her beneath him and deepens their kiss past anything Rey has ever known. 

“I love you.” 

Rey has always known, his love is reserved and perennial, unconditional and profound, in a way she can’t describe but everyone in their orbit can see. Insecurity tight in her stomach flutters away at his simple statement, knowing he’s never lied to her and knows her like no one else. She lets her tongue move against his and arms wind around his neck as she grows more fearless of what's to come-- past this night and the next. 

“Are you still nervous?” Ben asks her as his mouth skims over the swell of her breast. 

“Maybe-- it’ll hurt, won’t it?” 

Her back arches into him as he teases the pebbled skin of her nipple. A large hand snakes over her spine, pushing her further off the mattress. 

“Not always,” he tells her as his clever mouth traces her ribs.

“I trust you, Ben.” 

He groans into her skin, “I’ll do my best to take care of you, sweetheart.” 

“I know, I know.” 

“Spread your legs for me.” 

Rey does without shyness, his knee pressing her legs wider. With a deep breath and furrow of her brows, she closes her eyes, expecting gentle prodding. Ben chuckles darkly somewhere above her and Rey moves to slap him for teasing her, but her hand meets nothing and his mouth is already between her legs. She cries out and her hips buck against the steady hands holding her against him. 

The second time is different for Rey. Anticipation curls more sweetly in her core, knowing exactly how good this feels and yearns for more. She’s more familiar with his tongue even when he works to prove how diligent he can be. For the first time, weakness is a welcomed trait as her legs go loose and slip off the edge of the bed. Instinctually, Rey knows there is a balance between them, where they can find solace in their imperfections. 

_Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben. Ben._

The press of two fingers slowly unravels with his steady rhythm. Her thigh trembles against his hair, Rey tries to plant a foot on the mattress but her weak knees keep slipping. Each groan against her skin reverberates through her, vibrating with every moment strung between them; each small touch and quip that built to this. Rey’s eyes flutter shut as she collapses against her pillow, feeling everything and forcing herself to bask in the pleasure, knowing soon her building orgasm will put a stop to it. 

“Don’t stop,” she whimpers when he kisses back up her body. 

Ben’s fingers curl perfectly when his other hand brushes her hair back and tells her, “I want to see you come apart for me.” 

He ducks his head to kiss her while his palm grinds into her clit. Rey moans quietly against his lips before, _“oh.”_

Ben licks at her parted lips before pulling back to watch her tense stomach shudder as tension is near release--

“Rey, can I?” 

“Yes. Please, please, don’t stop--”

He positions his hips between hers, pushing in slower than he had with his fingers. Though broader and thicker, there is no pain, just a sweet ache of how her body accommodates him. Ben searches her face and shallow breathing for any discomfort, taking her heel pressing into his lower back as a sign to move. Her smaller hands claw at his biceps as he changes the angle just so to mimic his hand’s movements.

“I want you, please--”

She lifts her hips to meet Ben’s every stroke, humming breathlessly at the friction created between them. Rey wonders how this can be new and familiar all at once. He kisses her and guides her fingers to her clit. Static clings to them before the thunder rolls as dulcet as her moans. She comes as the patter of rain starts, his hand threading through hers just as it has in every storm they been caught in, laughing while seeking cover. Heat flashes through her with the sudden worry that the bed is as damp as the outdoors with sweat and--

“Again,” is Ben’s near command when she’s still writhing from aftershocks, pressing so deep her eyes roll back beneath her lashes. He follows the whine up her throat with his lips with murmurs soft encouragement, knowing how strong she is and not giving anything that she couldn’t take. The new depth he’s achieved allows his pace to harden and grow unsteady as Ben tells her everything he’s held on his tongue for so long, imbibing her skin with sweet nothings.

His free hand roves, tracing and memorizing each line and shiver. 

“Ben!” Rey cries out, seeming to claw her way into his heart as her fingernails dig deep and her cunt tightens around him. Ben presses his forehead against hers as he follows her release with a grunt. She pants under him, looking up with glossy eyes, and he’s never felt such thick adoration for anyone other than her. He soothes the whimper on her lips with a kiss as he pulls out. 

Cleaned and sated, they lay beneath the sheets tangled sleepily. 

“Do you think I’ll be ready to be on top next time?” she asks with her chin on his chest, “It’s the only thing I’ve ever liked to watch.” 

Ben contemplates such a position with an arm thrown over his eyes. 

“You’re going to be the death of me,” he groans.

***

Driving feels the same. Rey had distracted him with a kiss as she pickpocketed the keys from his pocket. Small touches to her thigh are now intentional and even more distracting as his fingers dipped beneath the seam of her shorts.

Neither of them notices the Louisiana border as they argue over which road to take. Rey wins by poking Ben in the side and tossing the map into the backseat.   
Later, lost, and pulled over trying to get signal on Ben’s phone, Rey leans against the SUV. 

“I don’t want this to end.” 

Ben’s phone pings a dozen times as he regains reception but he’s only looking at her with an unreadable description. 

“What do you mean?”

She wraps her arms around herself even though it’s close to ninety and redirects. 

“What’s with the notifications, you don’t have friends.” 

“Har har,” Ben deadpans, “I put some of our videos on youtube.”

“You did not!” Rey exclaims, “Not with cheesy ‘spooky music’ and stuff right?” 

“No, no--” he raises his hands in a surrender-- “just a few clips. A couple of years ago students were asking me what I did during the summer. I told them about you and our ghost hunting tradition and they didn’t believe me, later once they were posted, people thought they were entertaining, liked that they were unscripted and genuine.” 

Rey pouts, “Do I look like a scaredy-cat?” 

“Do you mean more than what you already-- ow, okay.” Ben rubs his arm and looks down at her scrunched up face, “people think you’re brave and ask you out a lot in the comments. I should have asked you, I’m sorry.” 

“Yeah, well, it’s sort of cool,” she says, still sullen that he kept it from her. “Do we have any, followers, or whatever?” 

He squints up into the sky, “around half a million, I think.” 

_“Benjamin Organa Solo--”_

She never expected when she jumped on for him to retaliate by pressing her into the side of a car, never had in the past. The black exterior warm in the afternoon sun, but a fraction of the heat in his eyes. 

“Yes?” 

“You’re a scoundrel.” 

Their lips nearly brush together when he asks, “Do I look like a scoundrel to you?” 

“Absolutely.”

Rey spends the rest of the drive scrolling through Ben’s youtube page and glossing over the comment sections. He’s barely in the videos other than when he turns the camera on himself as they leave a haunted property to flip it off, Rey laughing near him. 

“I wonder if we can convert my tapes to digital.”

“Should be easy enough. Then, you won’t have to watch them on that hulking beast you call a tv in your garage.” 

“It’s for--”

“Authenticity,” he finishes with a sly smile and a look from the corner of his eye. She sticks her tongue out at him and continues delving into his phone. An idea strikes her. 

“I knew it!” she yells and the wheel in Ben’s hand jerks, “You _are_ a scoundrel-- I found your group chat.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s named ‘Rey’s Birthday 2020.’ It even has your dad in it.”

“Alright, nosy, just don’t--”

But Rey is already scrolling back out of Ben’s reach, ducking under his arm, and crawling into the backseat before he can take his phone back. 

Her head pokes back through the seat a moment later, something changed in the air and waiting for her. 

“What is this about Ireland?” 

“Just thinking of places to take you for your birthday. I was going to use the summer to pick a destination,” he confesses gruffly. 

“I’d go to Ireland,” Rey tells him softly, “I’d go anywhere with you.” 

“Really?” he asks with her knuckles brushing against his lips. 

“Really.”

“Did you bring your passport?” 

“I think I just put in my suitcase when I bought it, why?” 

“Let’s go somewhere.” 

“Where?” 

“Anywhere.” 

Rey grins, bright and ardent, “There are catacombs under Paris.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading and each nice comment!!! This has always been one of my favorite pieces of writing 🥺🥺🥺
> 
> I originally posted this as something for people to read between updates on my Rear Window Ethics, but engagement has been low on the first chapter so if you like Alfred Hitchcock, 50's high society fashion, Rose Tico having actual lines, and mmmm a touch of unsexy, murder voyeurism ? [**read here and leave a comment if you want more!**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24392455/chapters/58837402)
> 
> my original writing page is on haitus while I work on my third draft of my novel but i still talk about writing (and current politics, media, college, etc) on [twitter @madsaialik!](https://twitter.com/madsaialik)
> 
> thanks again!

**Author's Note:**

> leave me something nice as a treat
> 
> find me on [twitter @madsaialik](https://twitter.com/madsaialik)


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